Re: [xsl] Stumped on why a field isn't showing up

["J.Pietschmann" <j3322ptm@xxxxxxxx>]

Deirdre Saoirse Moen wrote:
> I'm trying to learn XSL(-FO), so I'm still beating my head against the 
> wall.
>
> I've managed to get everything except, oh, the most important piece of 
> information to render correctly.

It seems you are missing some important concepts, in particular the
concept of the context node in an XSLT template:

> <xsl:template match="/">
>   <fo:root font-family="Courier" font-size="12pt">
...
>     <xsl:apply-templates select="novel/chapter"/>

At this point the context node is the tree's root node.
You are telling the processor to get the node set containing
the novel/chapter nodes and apply templates, which will
hopefully be matched by the following template:

> <xsl:template match="chapter">
>   <fo:page-sequence master-reference="manuscript-body">
>     <fo:static-content flow-name="xsl-region-before">
>       <fo:block text-align="right" space-before="1in" end-indent="1.5in">
>         <xsl:value-of select="/novel/heading"/> / <fo:page-number/>
Here you use an absolute XPath, which will get you the
string value of /novel/heading, something you probably expect.

>     <fo:flow flow-name="xsl-region-body" line-height="1.5">
>       <xsl:apply-templates select="novel/author"/>
However, at this point you use a relative XPath (no slash "/"
in format). This means the processor will try to walk it down
from the context node, which is most likely a /novel/chapter
node. I suppose these nodes don't have a novel child, and you
wont get to the /novel/author node anyway.
You want to use
       <xsl:apply-templates select="/novel/author"/>
       <xsl:apply-templates select="/novel/address"/>
here.

You should probably think about restructuring your processing
logic. In many cases it's considered "bad style" to grab parts
outside the subtree starting at the currently processed node.
A way to avoid this is to use template parameters, they have
their own set of drawbacks though.

J.Pietschmann